by Contributed | Sep 28, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
We’re excited to continue our blog series to share the learning journeys of our customers, partners, employees, and future generations. Today, we present the third blog in the series and show how Microsoft is working with its partners worldwide to help build and validate technical skills using Microsoft technologies.
In June 2020, Accenture achieved something that no Microsoft partner has ever done; the company trained so many employees that it submitted it as a Guinness World Record. The massive global systems integrator certified a record number of global Azure certifications from a single organization with 20,000 employees across all Microsoft solutions in a fiscal year. Accenture also achieved a record with 17,000 certified employees on Azure.
“At Accenture continuous learning, constant upskilling, and achieving expertise at scale is a way of life,” explains Raghavan Iyer, Advanced Technology Centers Lead for Avanade and leader for its Azure Cloud Practice. “In order to capture the mindshare of all the engineering professionals in our organization, we kicked off a program called ‘Microsoft on my Mind’ and recorded the highest number of Azure certifications ever, a 500% increase year-over-year. We immediately saw a tremendous response and were proud when Microsoft informed us that we were named Microsoft Global Alliance SI Partner of the Year.”
Advanced Technology Center
The central point for record-setting global technical training success of the Microsoft on Mind program is Avanade’s Advanced Technology Center, also led by Iyer. The initiative targeted practitioners who focused on both Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies across both Accenture and Avanade, a joint venture between Accenture and Microsoft. A big part of the program was a specifically designed cross-technology framework targeted at the Microsoft practitioners to measure the versatility of the company’s talent. Accenture identified the basic skill sets of their talent, after which they were quickly rotated into other Microsoft technology training programs.
“Continuous learning has definitely given a tremendous boost to my career,” said Tuhin Sarkar, who achieved two Azure certifications as part of the Accenture program this year. “I use Microsoft Learn to study different topics when I have time and it has also helped me focus on the right areas as it provides learning advice and suggestions. I am planning to add higher level certifications this upcoming year.”
Microsoft on my Mind
Accenture used a variety of unique approaches to constantly initiate its employees to engage in upskilling their Microsoft credentials. The ‘Microsoft on My Mind’ program started with a massive and very successful Data and AI hackathon, followed by the largest Teams hackathon in the world (to-date) that generated over 800 ideas. The third event, Azure Cloud Week, aimed to emphasize and drive Azure certification at Accenture. The icing on the cake was a speech by Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, during his visit to India. Dubbed “Developer Empowered,” the Accenture event was simulcast across seven cities to drive certification at scale for Power Platform.
“The whole process was really motivating because there was a lot of excitement across the team to get certified,” said Manas Chatterjee, a cloud architect at Accenture who has completed more than fifteen certifications and is also is a trainer in the program. “As an architect and trainer, I always have to be on top of the latest technologies, so learning is a big part of my job. During the ‘Microsoft on my Mind’ effort, we not only leveraged self-paced study through Microsoft Learn, but they also established a platform where we’re able to connect to other senior architects to share viewpoints, case studies and ideas. And that connection has continued as a standing weekly meeting to learn.”
Diversity and inclusion matters
A big part of Accenture’s success was a heavy investment in diversity as a part of its training programs. Over the past fiscal year, 37% of its certified employees in the program were women, a number that will only keep growing, according to Alakananda Ray, an Enterprise Cloud Architect at the company, who also leads the India Azure Test Capability and is the heart and soul of the company’s ‘Women In Cloud’ initiative.
“Accenture runs several programs for women in technology to support our diversity and inclusion charter,” explains Ray. “Many of the participants in the program are mothers returning to the workforce. Microsoft Learn provides immense flexibility with self-paced learning content to help prepare for certification, regardless of whether they are a business analyst, developer, or an architect. The learning culture here at Accenture is invaluable.”
Enabling partners to upskill
The Accenture learning story is one of many across the Microsoft Partner Network’s effort to increase partner technical and practice development. Microsoft has developed resources to guide partners through the journey, starting with a Partner Transformation Readiness Assessment, which determines current capability for partners who want to participate and provides guidance on next steps to grow technical and business skills. From there, partners are directed to the Training Center, a connection point to on-demand technical, sales, and marketing learning paths and courses, including the Virtual Training Series, which offers certification preparation courses and advanced technical training. Microsoft also provides guidance on how to hire a trainer to ensure partners get the right people to deliver solutions and services customers need.
“The skills gap is a real threat to the success and profitability of our partners. Microsoft supports partners by helping them make the training investments to create a culture of learning and professional development,” adds Phil Webb, Business Strategy for Partner Enablement at Microsoft. “Accenture is a great example of a partnership where we deeply invested in each other’s success. We have done a lot of intense work on skilling with Accenture in our FY20, including the support of their events throughout the year to encourage employee skilling on Microsoft technologies.”
Accenture, in the meantime, is waiting patiently to find out whether its skilling milestones will be recognized by the Guinness World Records and has no plans to slow down its record-setting learning initiatives. The company is continuing to invest and expand in the successful skilling programs it has instituted, and is encouraging recently-certified employees to take different, deeper, or more specialized training and certifications, while is also planning regional versions of their cloud week event across the globe this upcoming fiscal year. Get ready for more records in 2021.
Related posts:
EY’s learning journey
Skilling future generations: A tale of two universities
![[Mentorship Spotlight] Community Mentor: Samuel Adranyi, MVP](https://www.drware.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/medium-239)
by Contributed | Sep 28, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Learn more about this week’s spotlighted community mentor, Samuel Adranyi, a Humans of IT Community Ambassador and Microsoft Azure MVP who shares his mentorship experience with 5 mentees via the Humans of IT Community Mentors mobile app!
On today’s #MentorshipMonday, meet our featured mentor, MVP, and Humans of IT community ambassador, Samuel Adranyi:
Q: Tell us a little about yourself.
A: My name is Samuel Adranyi. I am Ghanaian and I have been in Tech for a little over 12 years. I moved home to Ghana last year. Prior to that I was working in the US – Beaverton, Oregon to be specific. I started my tech journey quite early in Grade 4, when I started writing Q basic. I love learning so naturally, I like to share and teach others too. I have been an instructor for 4 or 5 years at a tech school here in Ghana before I left for the States. So, it is kind of like an extra curricular thing that I enjoy. I am always trying to learn something, and then once I learn it, I look for a way to share it.
Q: What does mentoring mean to you?
A: One of the things I realized during the early journey of my learning was that there were people that were surprised and intrigued that someone so young could be so interested in computers and technology. Thankfully, I got a lot of support from parents and friends and I realized that the support I got from people really helped motivate and kept me going. The fact that I had some form of an internal support system from my family made a huge difference to me. If this is how it is, I figured that there are a lot more opportunities for other people like me to be guided, mentored etc and it will make the journey so much easier for them. In my case, I got that. Unlike most people that have to learn all on their own (which can feel lonely/isolating at times) or just go to school to learn it, as a budding technologist I have had the luxury of having a 1:1 instructor after the regular class. So that gave me the insight on the value of helping guide people and it was how I ultimately become passionate about mentoring.
Q: When did you first start as a mentor?
A: I would say that for as long as I can remember! Here is an example: in primary school when we started with computers – our school only had 2 units. We didn’t have a computer lab because it was something that had just started, plus computers were very expensive. The computers were stored in the headmaster’s office. When it was time for computer class or lessons, we had to go to his office, get the computers, take them back to class, and set them up. Back then there were no indicators on the keyboard or the mouse to tell you that the green one goes to the keyboard and the purple one goes to the mouse. There wasn’t anything like that – so you had to figure it out, look at the ping count. That was part of the training, but after a while I was the only person that could immediately assemble and put the computer together. I happened to be one of the few that could do it, so after that I was the main custodian for making sure the computers were properly set up. I loved it doing it so the instructor would say, “Help your friends”. So, from Grade 4, I just kept helping my friends (my earliest mentees of sort!), and this simply continued into high school. Now here we are!
Q: Amazing, so is this what inspired you to be a mentor?
A: Yes, here is another example – in Ghana you get to select your high school based on your preference. It all depends on your grades to determine whether you’ll get your first or second choice selection. Fortunately, I got my first choice and they were using the high school’s computer lab for the administration process– to get your uniform, books, and stuff. So, I was peeking into the computer lab and I was talking to my Dad, telling him that I am not joining to join the computer class. He was surprised and asked, “Why not? You love computers.” And I replied, “Look at the computers – they are so old. They are older than the ones I used back at home.” Unfortunately, or fortunately for me the computer instructor was just passing by and he overheard me. He said, “Young man – what are you saying about my computers?” Almost immediately I gave him the specs of his computers (without even touching them, just from looking at them). He went silent, and looked astoundingly at me, then my Dad and back to me. My Dad was smiling- you know, the proud father moment. The teacher said, “Do you know anything about computers?” Then my Dad jumped in – “Oh yes, this is my son and he already took all the credentials surpassing even me in Windows 95, DOS, Q Basic – he has all of the paperwork from the certification pack.” So, the teacher looked at me and now seemed a bit interested – he then said, “When you are done with your admission process, come see me.” What was cool was that I had collected all the diskette packs (mind you, there weren’t CDs at that time). You had drivers that were generic – I had Printer drivers, Windows 95 drivers etc. I had a full stack and would bring them to school.
After admission, I went to the lab and started having a conversation. Most of the computers were broken down – and at that time most of the schools had to wait their turn to have computers repaired, so if the computer broke down you would have to just sit and wait until someone comes from the Capitol to fix the computer. During the first 2 weeks of school, I was going around fixing the computers. The headmaster would come by the lab, and he would watch me at work and exclaim in surprise, “Wait, another computer is now on, and then another computer is on too!” The instructor would say, “Yes- this young guy here has been fixing them.” Since there, it has just been like that; I learning by doing, and then extend my knowledge by helping others. This has inspired me to continue to help others all throughout my career.
Q: How did you get matched with your mentees?
A: Actually, we first met outside of the mentorship app but eventually moved onto it. When I got back from the States, I wanted to mentor a few very enthusiastic and determined people in Ghana. I originally with 5 people on my own outside of the app since we already had something going, but then during one of our Humans of IT x MVP community calls we heard about the Community Mentors app. We wanted to have a more formal process and the app allowed us to have more structure. So now I tell any potential mentee: go on the app, sign up, look for me, and then we can have a more formalized process.
Q: What has been your experience with the app?
A: The app is a cool thing – it is a great way to have a formal process for mentoring. It is fun and is a good experience. This gives people a way to connect with you and actually form a connection
Q: What is the key to being an effective mentor?
A: Being yourself – it sounds simple but that is the greatest thing I have seen. Make your mentees like part of your life – thinking like my home is their home. They know when to be goofy with you and also when it is time to get serious. If you are yourself around your mentees, it goes a long way. They need to know that you are human and make mistakes too. They need to see that you make mistakes and that it is okay to not be okay. Sometimes mentees think mentors are that perfect unicorn, but no one is perfect. When you start making yourself accessible and being vulnerable too, that is when mentees can really learn from you.
Want to start your journey as a mentor and/or mentee?
1. Download the Microsoft Community Mentors app (make sure you’re on the latest v3.0!)
2. Log in with your Tech Community credentials (Note: You will need to be a member of the Humans of IT Community). If you are not already a member, you will be prompted to complete your Tech Community registration and officially join the Humans of IT community.
3. Create your profile and look for your future mentor and/or mentee!
Happy mentoring!
#HumansofIT
#Mentorship
#CommunityMentors
by Contributed | Sep 28, 2020 | Azure, Technology, Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Organizations of all sizes have an opportunity to optimize cost savings and increase agility by migrating their SAP workloads to Microsoft Azure. Your SAP estate is mission-critical, and together with our partners, we excel at streamlining migration to an enterprise-grade cloud platform you can trust.
Azure runs some of the largest SAP production landscapes in the world, including customers such as Walgreens Boots Alliance, Daimler, and Carlsberg. Microsoft itself has been an SAP customer for nearly three decades. We have migrated our SAP estate to Azure, and our IT organization shares best practices on migrating to Azure so customers can capitalize on these learnings. After helping customers deploy thousands of SAP instances to Azure, we are pleased to offer a well-defined migration journey, available at the SAP on Azure migration center.
1. Discover: Evaluate your current SAP estate, define goals, and align key stakeholders
Whether you are planning a simple migration or embarking on a complex SAP transformation, the first step is to take inventory and catalog your current SAP estate. Document all your SAP and non-SAP solutions. In addition, analyze your current infrastructure configuration. This includes “right-sizing” of compute, storage, and networking requirements based on current usage and estimated growth patterns. During this exercise, rationalize what workloads need to be refreshed, renewed, and/or replaced based on your business requirements. Then, define goals for the capabilities you would like to unlock with Azure.
People: Determine your key stakeholders and empower IT staff with the necessary training to anticipate and advance technical changes. This will help align teams and set expectations. It can also help in developing an action plan with assigned resources and commitments.
Partners: Most organizations choose to work with an experienced System Integrator (SI) from our partner ecosystem for proven expertise with both SAP and Azure. Engage your partners early to help understand your current IT landscapes, prioritize what you want to build, and envision the migration process to ultimately achieve your transformation goals in the cloud.
2. Prepare: Build the blueprint for your unique migration journey that will respond to rapidly evolving business needs
Together, SAP, Microsoft, and our partners offer best practices and planning materials to map your existing ecosystem to the desired future state.
Architecture and Design: Start with an Architecture and Design planning session with your SAP-certified partner and Microsoft account team. Using the information from the Discovery phase, we can evaluate and map to the powerful capabilities of Azure.
Azure provides virtual machines and HANA large instances that are optimized for deploying SAP landscapes. We also offer tools to establish security, high availability, disaster recovery and backup plans. If your organization needs specific customizations, such as custom code, governance, and compliance, we can add those elements to your ecosystem to manage them going forward. As you build your business case, consider the total cost savings that can be realized by optimizing the scale, size, and snooze options available in Azure.
To streamline this process, leverage our reference architectures for proven practices to help you deploy and run your SAP landscapes. Additionally, with the Embrace initiative, SAP and Microsoft are committed to supporting your migration to Azure and planning your upgrade to S/4HANA.
When it comes to the launch timeline, it is important to understand the groups of SAP applications that should be deployed together and the appropriate sequences for migration. Many organizations choose low-risk applications to deploy first, to help establish understanding of system interdependencies. This can also help you learn how to patch and manage production systems. Set aside time for testing, training, and sufficient IT change management communication updates, to maximize business readiness.
Once you have a solid understanding of how Azure resources are to be deployed, and have built benchmarks to measure success, you are ready for the next step.
3. Migrate: Launch your migration strategy and go live
Realize: It is time to bring your plans to life. You may consider starting with a pilot, to test initial migration processes. Ensure your planned configuration accounts for all your desired capabilities. Throughout this phase it is critical to anticipate any relevant planned downtimes and communicate technology changes to the business.
Deploy: As you start the migration process, you can leverage our open source SAP deployment automation framework with Terraform and Ansible. These components automate deployment of your SAP landscape based on SAP on Azure reference architectures and best practices recommended by SAP and Microsoft. Use these services to streamline your migration as you consider all the elements of your new environment.
Think long-term about your overall SAP estate. Reference the SAP virtual machine deployment guide. Check your backup and recovery capabilities. Then conduct the orchestra of cutover for compute, storage, network, and access controls for the SAP landscapes you want to take to the cloud.
4. Run: Focus on running SAP on Azure and optimize for security and performance
After you have deployed your SAP workloads in Azure, you can optimize landscapes for new technological advances and continuously cut costs as new updates are shared. Azure offers several services to help you secure your SAP estate and give you visibility across all your applications.
Protect your data with Azure Backup for HANA and ensure it is well managed with Azure Monitor for SAP solutions, which collects real-time telemetry across your new configuration. To optimize your SAP Basis operations, evaluate SAP Landscape Manager (LaMa) and use the SAP LaMa Azure Connector to relocate, copy, clone, and refresh SAP systems. Azure security services will help you establish a secure environment, so you can run mission-critical apps and data with confidence. While you are continuously gaining feedback on your ecosystem, you can optimize performance by actively receiving reports on availability and cost management. In addition to these Azure services, we also support choices for third-party applications, and create integration experiences to match your unique preferences.
5. Innovate: Maximize immediate business insights and be future-ready
This is an exciting area for customers as they begin to break down silos and create new user experiences to add tremendous business value.
After migration, you can integrate your SAP and non-SAP data through an extensive portfolio of Azure and SAP data services. This allows you to create real-time dashboard views of current operations, use data analytics to understand trends and gain predictive insights, and use data visualization tools to communicate across the organization and enable powerful business outcomes.
Customers who shift their SAP workloads to Azure can access a robust repository of built-in process integration apps and APIs. For example, you can integrate SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) single-sign on (SSO), to manage data access across multiple sources from a central location. This central location can contain automated tools to help you manage workflows, with real-time visibility into your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The developers in your organization will appreciate the ability to tap into more than 100 cloud services in Azure to innovate with new capabilities in the cloud. You can also enhance productivity and collaboration, with integration to Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Power Apps, and Microsoft Power BI, as well as first-class integration with SAP solutions like SuccessFactors, Ariba, and Fieldglass.
Ready to start your SAP migration journey to Azure?
Visit the new SAP on Azure migration center where you will find all the resources you need to streamline the migration of your SAP landscape to Azure and begin to realize the benefits of cloud transformation.
Register for our upcoming webinar series on October 13, 2020 to hear directly from Microsoft experts and ask your questions during the Q&A.
by Contributed | Sep 28, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
As much of the business world works from home, we’re relying even more heavily on our mobile devices to stay productive as we multitask our way through this pandemic. That reliance means it’s even more important than ever that these endpoints are secure. Microsoft has been making significant investments in detection and response. Our integrated approach, investments in cross platform support, prioritization of threats, and auto investigation and response are just some of the ways Microsoft Defender for Endpoint takes next-gen endpoint security to a new level.
These investments are making an impact. In a report titled “Microsoft expands capabilities and platforms for Microsoft Defender ATP” published by 451 Research, Microsoft is considered an endpoint security platform by security buyers, according to their Voice of the Enterprise: Information Security, Workloads and Key Project 2020 research.
Over the last few years, security leaders have aimed to streamline their security operations by reducing the amount of security tools of tools in their system, and prioritizing solutions that solve more challenges and fit better into their comprehensive security posture, to get closer to a model of Zero Trust. Our broad set of endpoint security capabilities and our deep integration into the Windows operating system and with other security solutions help to address these initiatives to simplify and modernize their infrastructure, while giving valuable time to their SOC.
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint offers the following capabilities:
- Agentless approach on Windows 10 and Windows Server – maintains a light footprint on the endpoint.
- Threat and vulnerability management – our risk-based approach to vulnerability management which now includes ServiceNow integration support.
- Attack surface reduction – includes better support for managing firewall rules and certifications and offers visibility and control into web threats.
- Next generation endpoint protection – leverages deep and broad security intelligence across Microsoft with machine learning models and built in OS security features.
- Endpoint detection and response – expanded capabilities to MacOS, alignment with the MITRE ATT&CK framework, integration of live response, and new capabilities in behavioral blocking.
- Auto investigation and remediation – includes integration with Microsoft Defender for Office 365 and Microsoft Defender for Identity, enables the organization to respond quickly at scale, and assists analysts during their investigations.
- Simplified licensing approach so customers understand exactly what they’re getting and how it fits into their existing infrastructure.
Download the report to get more in-depth details of their assessment.
For more information about our industry leading endpoint security solution or to sign up for a trial, visit our Microsoft Defender for Endpoint page.
We are so grateful to our customers who have been on this journey with us and have helped us build an amazing product – thank you!
by Contributed | Sep 28, 2020 | Uncategorized
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Agenda
On October 12 at 1PM PDT, 9PM BST. Ayse Mutlu from the University of Oxford and Paul DeCarlo from Microsoft’s IoT Advocacy team will livestream an in-depth walkthrough of a custom Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery pipeline using Azure DevOps for IoT Edge Solutions.
The content will be based on an interactive learning module from MS Learn that can be followed at your leisure at https://aka.ms/learnlive/cicd.
You can follow along with us live on October 12, or join the Microsoft IOT Cloud Advocates here in the forum https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/internet-of-things-iot/ct-p/IoT throughout October to ask your questions about CI / CD development with Azure DevOps for IoT Edge solution.
Meet the Presenters
Data Scientist & Tutor of AI: Cloud and Edge Implementations – University of Oxford
Paul DeCarlo
Principal Cloud Advocate, Microsoft
Session Details
The Internet of Things is a technology paradigm that involves the use of internet connected devices to publish data often in conjunction with real-time data processing, machine learning, and/or storage services. Development of these systems can be enhanced through application of modern DevOps principles which include such tasks as automation, monitoring, and all steps of the software engineering process from development, testing, quality assurance, and release. In this LearnTV Live session, we will create a DevOps solution for Azure IoT Edge devices. The solution will employ a CI/CD (continuous integration/continuous deployment) strategy using Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines, and Azure Monitor Application Insights on a Kubernetes cluster.
Learn Live Module which will be discussed and demonstrated during the session: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/learn/modules/implement-cicd-iot-edge/
Our Livestream will be shown live on this page and at Microsoft Learn TV on Monday 12th October 2020.
This is a Global event and can be viewed LIVE at these times:
:india: 13.30pm IST | :european_union: 10pm CEST | :united_kingdom: 9pm BST | :united_states: 4pm EDT | :united_states: 1pm PDT
We hope to be able to bring you live chat on Learn TV on that date, but you can also interact with us watch the live stream on LearnTV: http://aka.ms/IOTOxford
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